Generosity as Ethics

A reinterpretation of Mauss’s The Gift reveals—besides its central topic, reciprocity—another implicit theme of generosity, which Mauss was criticized for having ignored. This renders the gift a double transaction. Generosity is a movement away from the self, constituting ethics as envisaged by Levinas. Introducing ethics into the context of the gift allows us to identify points missed by Mauss’s supporters and his critics. Mauss locates generosity primarily in exchanges with the mythical world that we identify as “the beyond,” that is, as a cultural expression of Levinas’s “other.” The other, as an ethical template expressed in generosity, transcends the cultural moralities of reciprocity. This ethical dimension eludes a utilitarian rationality that centers on the self and renders the notion of a “pure gift” impossible. Bataille and Derrida find no escape from this conundrum, but the Maussian double transaction resolves it. We explore this resolution via new insights into the ambiguities of the South Asian “pure gift” dan, examined in the Muslim Punjab.